LearnDash vs. Kajabi: a comparison

When you’re ready to sell your online courses, finding the right online course platform can be overwhelming.

You might find it difficult to make a decision with all of the options on the marketplace.

The right software will have all the features you need, with as few integrations as possible, and ideally works with your existing tech stack.

Kajabi and LearnDash have different software philosophies.

LearnDash’s focus is purely on online course creation, whereas Kajabi has the admirable goal of handling your entire business.

Kajabi: All-in-one platform

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform. It has a plug-and-play nature that makes it easy to get your business up and running quickly. Kajabi is one of the more popular online course platforms.

Kajabi tries to do everything: host your main website, sell online courses, deliver courses, handle marketing automation pipelines, offer marketing tools, send marketing emails, and design landing pages.

With Kajabi, you sign up for one tool that handles everything from payments, to course creation with a drag and drop builder, marketing tools, and member management.

The downside of an all-in-one platform is that if you need anything different from what’s included, you’re pretty well out of luck — or you have to figure out how to duct-tape a solution together. 

LearnDash: WordPress plugin

LearnDash is a WordPress plugin and focuses on the Learning management system (LMS) functionality. Learning management systems focus on online course features to help students with learning retention. LMS features are essential if you want to run a robust course or membership of any kind.

LearnDash has a robust marketplace with integrations and add-ons available. Using these add-ons is how you’ll build out your setup. These add-ons usually come at an additional cost. Some will integrate seamlessly with LearnDash while others will require a third-party tool.

That means you may need to purchase and integrate additional plugins to handle:

• payments and payment administration
• membership levels to run cohesive membership sites
• integration with your CRM for marketing automations
• and more.

You can accomplish a lot with WordPress plugins, but we all know that the more moving pieces you have, the more opportunities there are for something to break. 

Kajabi’s different pricing tiers limit the number of products, courses, and active members you can have, in turn limiting your business’ growth. 

If you want to offer a free course to someone when they opt-in to your email list as your lead magnet (what AccessAlly calls a Login Optin™), you’d be limited to 1000 sign ups on the $149/month plan, or 10,000 sign ups on the $199/month plan, or 100,000 for the $399/month plan.

The signup limit is not effective for list building, or turning free members into paid participants.

With LearnDash there are no such limits. You can have as many members as you want, and as many courses or products as you want. There are 3 pricing tiers for LearnDash based on the number of site licenses you need, or desired reporting options. 

Keep in mind that you might need to add-on some additional paid plugins to make LearnDash do everything you need, but these tend to be one-time or yearly costs and not tied to your sales.

It’s imperative for SaaS and tech companies to have a strong customer support system in place to ensure the success of their users with their product. 

Kajabi’s customer support is available 24/7 via email and live chat. If you sign up for an annual plan you also receive two 1:1 sessions with their team to work through your setup. They also have an extensive knowledge base and in-app training to help you with the setup, step-by-step. 

In comparison, LearnDash doesn’t have 24/7 support. Their hours are Monday-Friday from 7am-4pm EST.  

Don’t let this deter you though.  We have found that email support is very effective, especially when you have a more complex question to troubleshoot.  It allows the support team time to sort through the issue and confidently provide you with a resolution.

This is where LearnDash really shines.  

LearnDash allows you to add a quiz or assessment at any level throughout a course, whether it’s at the end of a course, a specific lesson, or topic.  With 8 question types to choose from, timed assessments, and the ability to submit any type of media as an input field, your options are endless. 

You can also require homework submissions after lessons or topics, and issue report cards and track homework and assessments with gradebooks. 

LearnDash has even taken their progress-tracking to a new level in their most recent release, tracking course progress across all levels of the course, baked right into the layout. 

You can also use LearnDash’s built-in certificates to reward your members as soon as they complete a course.  This is a great way to motivate students to complete the material.  

While Kajabi does allow you to create assessments to reinforce the material and test student retention, your options for quiz and question types aren’t as robust. Their questions are limited to multiple choice and multiple selection options, only.  

Kajabi users can now access a Product Progress Report that allows you to track your customer’s progress through your product, number of logins, start date, and date of last login.

Kajabi has built-in Stripe and PayPal integration with coupons using a multi-step order form. However, you cannot take recurring subscription payments or run payment plans with PayPal on Kajabi.

Kajabi also offers affiliate tracking functionality in their mid and high-level plans. However, it does not allow you to add swipe copy and advertising banners for your affiliates to access in your members’ area. If you’re looking for a streamlined affiliate center and PayPal recurring payments, I recommend looking at AccessAlly as an alternative to Kajabi. 

LearnDash has limited built-in e-commerce functionality, however, if you have a simple setup and only offer one-time payments for courses, no additional plugins are needed and it natively integrates with PayPal, Stripe and 2checkout.  

However, if you’re selling subscriptions or offering payment plans, an add-on or additional plugin is needed to achieve this functionality.  The same holds true for affiliate features.  

This is where the costs and complexity start to add up for LearnDash.

• You are open to a larger tech stack, and using a lot of different plugins to achieve your goals
• You absolutely need SCORM or Tin-Can LMS integration
• You’re not picky about the look-and-feel of your course
• You don’t need deep CRM integration to create more personalized customer experiences, but you do need a lot of quizzing options

• You need a bare-bones course website, with no plans for added functionality down the line
• You want to have your site up and running quickly, so you can test your ideas without worrying about design
• You don’t use a CRM like Infusionsoft, Ontraport, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or Drip to do your email marketing automation
• You don’t mind giving up full control to have a website, email marketing, and course platform that handles everything in one place